Transport Planning for Indian Cities

For efficient planning of goods transport in an urban area location of activities involving movement of goods needs to be carefully controlled. At present, however, industrial locations are specified or permitted in and around our cities and towns with almost every other consideration in mind except the volume and direction of the goods traffic that is likely to be generated as a result. What applies to goods traffic applies as well to location of concentrations of office employment. In our urban areas office employment is growing faster than any other category of employment and concentration of office employment can create severe transport problems — as it has in Bombay where offices are heavily concentrated at one tip of the island. Office functions do not all require to be concentrated in the same area. Government activities and trading activities in particular can nearly always be separated without impairing efficiency; there may in fact be some advantage in such a separation. Educational activities equally can be separately located. As technology brings innovations and the economy progresses, we must expect a shift in the modes of urban passenger transport. The objective should be to encourage those modes which bring the greatest degree of travel comfort to the public for a given investment of resources and which will remain useful far into the future. In effect, this means discouraging use of motor cars in cities and investment in public transport which will not only yield a greater capability in terms of person-trips per rupee invested but also provide more permanent solutions for future transport problems. The simplest way to limit the use of motor cars is to restrict their production. This is what has saved Moscow from the acute traffic problems that other large cities face.